Readers talk back about the Christian-right take on environmentalism

  “The Godly Must Be Crazy,” Glenn Scherer’s article on right-wing Christian evangelical politicians and their hostility toward environmental protections,...

Holy Frijoles!

Burgeoning soybean market transforming South American environment The global market for soybeans is exploding, largely driven by massive demand from...

Perchlorate

We get lots and lots of press releases here. Occasionally I like to pass one along.

Earlier this month, virtually every paper in the nation published a story on a National Academy of Sciences report on the rocket-fuel ingredient perchlorate. The report, they claimed, showed that perchlorate is some 20 times safer than U.S. EPA estimates, which could save businessses millions.

But according to the Environmental Working Group, this isn't actually what the report said. Read on:

Kenn Kaufman, birding guru, answers questions

Kenn Kaufman. What work do you do? I’m associated with National Audubon Society (currently as field editor for Audubon magazine),...

Hmm.

Two and a half centuries ago, early economists in France postulated that all wealth springs from the earth: farming, timber harvest, mining, and fishing were the sole sources of value, value that then circulated throughout the rest of the economy. It was not a coincidence that the ruling landed gentry who controlled the dominant resource, agricultural land, supported this theory. In England, at about the same time, a different theory dominated: All wealth results from exports that bring in the outside income that circulates through the economy. It was not a coincidence that the rising commercial trading class strongly supported that theory.

Economics as we know it, starting with Adam Smith, developed as a critical attack on such self-serving narrow conceptions of the "origins of the wealth of nations." But two and a half centuries later we still have self-interested parties flogging these theories rather than treating them as long discredited and abandoned historical curiosities. The Urban Futures, Inc. consulting group's "Regions and Resources: The Foundations of British Columbia's Economic Base" is the latest example. It argues that the BC economy continues to be almost exclusively dependent on natural resource industries operating in the rural areas of British Columbia. The greater-Vancouver metropolitan economy is simply an avaricious parasite living off the wealth being generated by the hardworking folks in the hinterland.

Another Refiner Mess

EPA brags about oil-refinery cleanups that haven’t happened “Settlements under EPA’s Petroleum Refinery Initiative have reduced emissions of air pollutants...

An interview with Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists

The Bush administration is gearing up to push for second-term priorities — including an energy bill, power-plant emissions legislation, and...

True preparedness

Most of the Northwest's coast is equipped with early warning systems for tsunamis. (See, for example, this article from the Newport (Oregon) News-Times.) But that doesn't make us immune from giant earthquakes and the resulting tsunamis. The 1964 Alaska earthquake was actually bigger on the Richter scale than the recent Indonesian temblor, and it set off a giant wave that swept a few Oregonians and Washingtonians to their deaths. A similar-scale quake and wave with more-local origins likely occurred around 1700, according to a good article in the Coos Bay (Oregon) World.

Flooding rivers pose a similar threat. They're typically not as sudden as tsunamis, but far more northwesterners are exposed to them. And unlike tsunamis, river flooding is an annual occurrence, with massive floods coming once or twice in a lifetime. (As climate changes, the severity of flooding may be accelerating.)

And though we have more systems in place, preparedness in the form of disaster kits, escape routes, and early-warning sirens is still a pale imitation of true preparedness for high waters.

Behind the Filipino floods

Want to get smart in a hurry on the environment in the Philippines, where illegal and legal logging are widely blamed for last week's devastating flooding? Population Reference Bureau, a Washington-based NGO, has just published a short primer on environment, demographic, and health conditions there. The brief presents a good overview, and it also provides specific suggestions for integrated population-health-conservation programs.

Stay tuned to the PRB website for further info on these issues in the Philippines. Their population-environment team -- headed by Roger-Mark De Souza -- has just returned from working with the first Filipino national conference on population, health and environment (PHE), attended by more than 250 officials, experts, donors, and media (including a representative from the President's Office) that resulted in a National PHE Declaration signed by congressional staff and mayors.